Considered to be the most important text in the Hindu religion, the lengthy poem Bhagavad-Gita is about 2,000 years old and part of the Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata. The Lord Krishna advises the hero Arjuna in his moral dilemma of whether to do his duty in war, which naturally involves killing, including, in this case, killing people he knows personally; or whether to follow the religious path of non-violence. This excerpt illustrates Arjuna’s central dilemma and Krishna’s solution, the renunciation at the heart of the Hindu concept of bhakti.

Excerpt from the Bhagavad-Gita

Arjuna: Renunciation is praised by thee, Krishna, and then the Yoga of holy work. Of these two, tell me in truth, which is the higher path?

Krishna: Both renunciation and holy work are a path to the Supreme; but better than surrender of work is the Yoga of holy work.

Know that a man of true renunciation is he who craves not nor hates; for he who is above the two contraries soon finds his freedom.

Ignorant men, but not the wise, say that Sankhya and Yoga are different paths; but he who gives all his soul to one reaches the end of the two.

Because the victory won by the man of wisdom is also won by the man of good work. That man sees indeed the truth who sees that vision and creation are one.

But renunciation, Arjuna, is difficult to attain without Yoga of work. When a sage is one in Yoga he soon is one in God.

No work stains a man who is pure, who is in harmony, who is master of his life, whose soul is one with the soul of all.

“I am not doing any work,” thinks the man who is in harmony, who sees the truth. For in seeing or hearing, smelling or touching, in eating or walking, or sleeping, or breathing, in talking or grasping or relaxing, and even in opening or closing his eyes, he remembers: “It is the servants of my soul that are working.”

Offer all thy works to God, throw off selfish bonds, and do thy work. No sin can then stain thee, even as waters do not stain the leaf of the lotus.

The Yogi works for the purification of the soul: he throws off selfish attachment, and thus it is only his body or his senses or his mind or his reason that works.

This man of harmony surrenders the reward of his work and thus attains final peace: the man of disharmony, urged by desire, is attached to his reward and remains in bondage.

The ruler of his soul surrenders in mind all work, and rests in the joy of quietness in the castle of nine gates of his body: he neither does selfish work nor causes others to do it.

The Lord of the world is beyond the works of the world and their working, and beyond the results of these works; but the work of Nature rolls on.

The evil works or the good works of men are not his work. Wisdom is darkened by unwisdom, and this leads them astray.

But those whose unwisdom is made pure by the wisdom of their inner Spirit, their wisdom is unto them a sun and in its radiance they see the Supreme.

Their thoughts on Him and one with Him, they abide in Him, and He is the end of their journey. And they reach the land of never-returning, because their wisdom has made them pure of sin.

Source: The Bhagavad Gita. London: Penguin [http://www.penguin.com], 1962.

Appears in

Bhagavad-Gita; Philosophy, Indian; Sanskrit Literature; Bhakti; Mahabharata